Team Harbour

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of XchangePlus, a growing new company in the real estate and technology industry. We focus on data management and transaction management in the real estate realm, which is one of the biggest markets growing in the United States. 

A lot of the components in the real estate business are outdated, and that's the same transition we’re seeing in the financial industry — shifting from paper to electronic. We’re one of the players that are changing the landscape from a tech perspective.

What challenge were you trying to address with Team Harbour?

We were an early-stage startup and had just received our first serious funding. We wanted to hire staff, but we couldn’t directly afford doing so without paying the premiums here in the United States. We were looking to outsource developers and other experts to help us with our business in the most cost-effective way.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Team Harbour primarily helps with back- and frontend development, including design. They’re in charge of the architecture, QA efforts, and some stand-alone projects. The majority of our microservices are built in-house by me and my staff; then, Team Harbour builds the React frontend.

Some of our systems' lines of code, which were created by another company were redone by the team because we weren’t satisfied with them. They build everything from scratch.

What is the team composition?

We work with 10–20 people from the team depending on the projects’ phase.

How did you come to work with Team Harbour?

They were referred to us, and then my business partner came into contact with their end. We decided to choose them because they had high references; they’ve already worked with other multinational companies and startups.

It was an easy choice because Team Harbour had the tech stack that we were looking for, and the pricing was great. Compared to other agencies, their pricing is competitive.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement started in September 2018 and it’s ongoing. We actually assigned them more work, and we’re going to have more projects with them. 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Team Harbour’s efforts are well-received by our internal team. Whenever you have internal and external staff working on something, there can be issues; however, it’s been going well and efficiently with Team Harbour. They manage to deliver the tasks according to the specs and other details that we want. We have no complaints, and the rest of my team would agree with that.

How did Team Harbour perform from a project management standpoint?

A project manager from Team Harbour oversees some project management. I’m old-fashioned — I don’t like tracking their work through much software and tools, so long as we get reports from them. I use basic functional tracking reports and Jira reports to oversee everything. We also have a visual team that reviews the deliverables. 

In terms of budget, it’s important to find a team that works on the agreed pricing. I’ve worked for other startups, and outsourcing was always a problem. However, with Team Harbour, that is not a concern, and we’re satisfied with how they work around deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Team Harbour’s communication skills are impressive — this goes back to the reason why we chose them. It’s important for us to work with a team in our time zone and that can speak English effectively, no matter what position they are in. I don’t want to work with someone in between, and some employees can’t speak our language. It’s good for us that Team Harbour’s members know how to communicate with us, both written and verbally. 

They go out of their way to make sure that there won’t be any delays and clarify things. They’re open, and they provide extra resources to ensure the project’s progression. It’s been pleasant to work with them considering my experience with other agencies in the past.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We don’t have any complaints.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Having been with other startups before, if you’re looking for an agency that can help you at any stage, you should consider the budget and time. Team Harbour always adheres to the budgets, and they are willing to provide other resources on their own.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a software development company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Team Harbour?

We’re a small business, and, from time to time, we need external help. Our workload isn’t consistent, so hiring full-time staff isn’t the best option.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve done several projects with Team Harbour, including one for our own product. We’ve created a search software that applies machine learning to big data in order to find unstructured data. It’s a very complex project, but Team Harbour provided us with people that quickly understood it.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with 4–5 developers from Team Harbour. We’ve also had contact with their project management team.

How did you come to work with Team Harbour?

We searched for a company that could combine web and mobile development, and someone introduced us to Team Harbour. We reviewed a few candidates, and we moved slowly. Team Harbour provided the right capabilities at a reasonable cost, and that was an incentive for us to try them out. We did it, and it worked out.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $150,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Team Harbour in November 2018, and our search engine project is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’re a very technical company, so it’s clear when things work and don’t work. The fact that we’ve been working with Team Harbour for such a long time is evidence that they know what they’re doing. We don’t have metrics, but we wouldn’t have continued working with Team Harbour if they weren’t doing a good job. 

How did Team Harbour perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management is very much on point. We discuss everything that has to be done and when, and Team Harbour tries to meet deadlines. They don’t always manage it, but it’s not because they’re sloppy. There can be misunderstandings, given that we speak in English, so there can be some losses, or we may not explain something clearly. However, that’s quickly corrected. Overall, their project management is very good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have very strong quantitative capabilities, and we develop technologies that require those skills, not just software development.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could spend a bit more time honing their English skills, although they’re not bad at all in this respect.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

One of the elements of our success with them is that we were very detailed and specific on what we needed to accomplish and how. Every problem can be solved in a variety of different ways, so having a detailed requirements document is a part of success.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We provide payment solutions for merchants. Our solutions help our customers reduce costs using automation and orchestration of payment processes. All payment functions are automated from pay-in to pay-out including reconciliation, invoicing, billing, and payment fulfillment.

For what projects/services did your company hire Team Harbour, and what were your goals?

Team.Harbour was hired to create the main module for connecting various services of the company to ensure that all payments were performed correctly.

They were also responsible for using an access rights management system within the framework of COMO products and a module for contract management and billing. The main goal was to link all our services into one solution. It made us the first company on the market with such a complex product.

How did you select Team Harbour and what were the deciding factors?

An associate of mine recommended this company to me. We scheduled a few meetings with Team.Harbour to find out whether they would be able to provide us the appropriate services. We also asked them to complete test tasks to evaluate their skills.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We worked on a full-cycle product development model of cooperation.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

The team consisted of 7 people, including: a senior Project Manager, BA, Tech Lead, senior Java developer, middle React.JS developer, 2 QA and a DevOps engineer.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

They provided us with technical documentation and a vast amount of test scenarios of using the developed middleware. They also provided regular demo workshops for us...

These APIs allowed each of our services to communicate with each other, which solved the challenge of having distributed components work as a holistic unit.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

Once we selected Team.Harbour, we had several meetings with one of their software architects. We discussed all of our requirements and goals as well as the big picture of the target system landscape so we were on the same page.

They are using Agile methodologies. Team.Harbour proposed an API-first approach to connect our systems which was a perfect fit for us.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

What impressed us most was the prompt communication and the very high technical qualification of the team members. We're very happy with the quality of work they provided us with.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Everything was great. We have nothing to add here. - It is important to hire a Business Analyst because they will help you clarify all the requirements and find the most suitable solution.